1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to IVR and other customer service systems, and, more particularly, to using natural language understanding to better respond to customer queries in a customer service/IVR system.
2. Description of the Background Art
Many companies use interactive voice response systems to communicate with customers over the phone. Using an IVR system enables customer calls to be handled more quickly and more cost effectively than having live agents handle all calls.
Callers to an IVR system will often elect to “opt out” of the IVR system and queue for a human agent. The opt-out rate in IVR systems can be significant—30-35% on average and as high as 65%. When a user opts out of an IVR system, the cost for handling customer calls increases because live agent time is more expensive than IVR system time. Also, when a user opts for a live agent, the hold time for the user can be significant (several minutes or longer). Therefore, it is desirable to have an IVR system (or other customer service system) that can better respond to user queries in an automated manner in order to minimizing agent cost while maintaining or increasing user satisfaction.